Throwing a party and want to cook the bite-sized exotic treats yourself? Want to have a romantic weekend cooking lesson with your husband? Are you an expat in the city and want to learn to roll out a chappati? Or do you want your team in office to re-examine their skills when they come together as a team? The answer, apparently, lies in the kitchen. Not in your home, but in a posh custom-built culinary studio or gourmet store, centred around a cooking island loaded with the latest gadgets and exotic ingredients.
Cooking classes are no longer limited to the ones that are conducted by women in their homes or ladies’ clubs to teach young brides how to put up a fancy dinner on the table. It is no longer a class even! It is about having an experience, learning exotic dishes and life strategies, and bonding with friends, family, and colleagues over food.
You could argue that you can be done by simply looking up recipes from the Internet or watching YouTube videos and learn along, but nothing to beat a real-life hands-on experience, and learning live from each other. Masterchefs on TV are inspiring people in Bengaluru to find fun ways to indulge in cooking. A birthday party cookout for kids, a kitty party cook-indulge session, baby showers and bachelorettes, Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day — just about anything is centred around a “do-it-yourself” kind of cooking experience.
Started in 2014 in the heart of Indiranagar by 30-something chef friends Sarabjeet and Faseeulla, Slurp Cooking Studio has seen people here pick up the knife and ladle to learn cuisines ranging from Lebanese, Spanish, French, Thai, to Awadhi and Coorgi. The duo believes that “there is a chef in each one of us”, and host workshops and classes to teach techniques. “People come to understand a particular cuisine, its ingredients, different techniques and or even gather small tips while learning to dish out a five-course meal.”
People from all walks of life, who love food, come to learn from us, says Sarabjeet.
They could be homemakers, young couples, software professionals, students, people who like to learn a new cuisine, and dedicated foodies who want to explore a particular cuisine have been to our studio,” explains Sarabjeet. “Slurp is focused to help everyone experience the fun and joy of cooking and we want people to go into their kitchens and cook up a complete meal at home from scratch,” adds Sarabjeet. Participants get to do everything from making the marinades, prepping for a dish, to cooking and eating it.”
At Koramangala’s Something’s Cooking, started by Satish Venkatachaliah, cooking experiences are mainly targeted at corporates for “learning, development, and innovation”. Families come together for cookouts too, as do individuals looking for something specific. They customise according to what people want, and have taught “everything from Japanese to Mexican and everything in between”.
“There are so many reality shows and there is a certain aspiration to have a ‘Masterchef’ kind of experience. We have all the possible gadgets and set-up to make it a culinary dream,” says Satish. Coming from a HR background, he gives an example of how he marries management and business concepts to a culinary experience. “A customer came to us with a team that wasn’t delivering their product on time. So we put them through a team activity that put constraints on time and budget and set deadlines. We switched off the gas when time was up even if their dish was incomplete; we charged them for every minute of gas they used after that. A lot of learning came out of it — uncooked food v/s unfinished product for client comparisons, values of time management and stress management.”
Bengalureans also seem to be picky about whom they learn from. Celebrity television chefs are a big draw, as are chefs from the city’s star hotels. Speciality food store Foodhall on M.G. Road invites chefs, food experts and sommeliers from across the world to “educate customers about the nuances of food. We’ve had Vikas Khanna, Pooja Dhingra, Aditya Bal, Vicky Ratnani, Bill Marchetti, Nikhil Aggarwal, and Namrata Purohit over the last year to conduct ‘masterclasses’ as we call them,” points out Swasti Aggarwal, food strategist at Foodhall.
They also run a monthly theme based on the current season — January is focused on winter food, Christmas was the theme for December. Expats, kids, working women and homemakers have been their participants.
Prices for such experiences in groups can range from Rs. 1,500 to Rs. 3,500 per person, on an average. Individual classes come at much steeper rates, going easily up to Rs. 6,000.
